King for a Day that lasts all year
by greenerinted
Summary: When he's 13, Jack Finch is known by his surname, and he knows that lives have endings. He's caused quite a few of them himself. But he's wrong. Only stories have endings. This is the story of Halloweentown, and what it used to be. Liberties taken with ILH canon, specifically later editions.


**King for a Day**

OR

The Problem with Life is that 364 Days of the Year aren't Halloween

When he's 13, Jack Finch is known by his surname, and he knows that lives have endings. He's caused quite a few of them himself.

When he's long since stopped counting his age, Jack Finch is known by his first name, and someone tells him he's wrong: that only stories have endings, that life is a tricky business precisely because it doesn't. And he will have seen enough of death to admit that it's never ended anything.

But Jack Finch has an ending. Jack Finch is a story.

One September early on, fall falls fast and heavy in a deluge of copper leaves. Sally Cooper's birthday party is too close to Halloween to be fancy-dress, but she makes it fancy-dress anyway. Mr Kitty goes because he has a crush on the Gibson twins – actually, crush isn't the right word: he kind of leers at Jemma from the bushes beside her house, and ogles Jeremy shamelessly when they change for gym. He's hitting puberty pretty hard, and has been for some time, with no end in sight. Finch goes because there's nothing else to do at this time of year except wait around for Devil Lad, and he can do that at a party as easily as he can anywhere else. And if they really go because Pig-Pig didn't get an invite, hey, Halloween's coming up. You can never be too practiced in cruelty. That's kind of the point.

They don't bother with new costumes because A) they're pretty attached to these ones, thank you very much and B) just because they're at her party, they don't want Sally Cooper to think they _like_ her, geez.

The party's a party, what else can you say? Red Solo cups; obnoxious suburban pool with hair in the filters; vomit in upholstery that just wasn't made for it; 40-odd self-obsessed juveniles babbling and preening like peacocks, and really, really, _really _shitty fancy-dress costumes. Sure, Finch's mask is low-effort, but at least it's cool-looking. He's pretty sure he heard one kid wearing white pants claiming to be half a glass of milk. What the hell is that about?

Anyway, that aside, it's all fun and games until Mr Kitty finds Jeremy Gibson fucking Nicola What's-her-face in the bathroom and his head explodes. Again. Blah blah panic blah. There's running and screaming and sirens growing steadily louder. The imbeciles dressed as the Three Musketeers scarper, less disturbed by the headless corpse rapidly exsanguinating all over Mrs Cooper's new pine flooring than by the possibility they'll be caught up for providing alcohol to minors again. Finch just rolls his eyes from behind his mask. Moochie shows up out of nowhere – she has a tendency to do that where there's gore involved – and takes a chainsaw to the milk kid's legs. Now he looks more like a raspberry smoothie, Finch reckons. A chunky raspberry smoothie.

Anyway, the outcome of this is that when Mr Kitty emerges in the second week of October, his costume is fucking ruined.

"Never met a bloodstain I couldn't beat before." He rips the ears off the orange hood with two satisfying tearing sounds. There's gravedirt under his nails, sticking around long after death's given up. "But it's too small for me anyway. I think I grew, like, a foot or something while I was down there." He scratches absently at the scraggly hair just under his jaw. "Can't believe I spent my growth spurt in a _coffin_. Hey!" Finch turns around, and he might be raising his eyebrows sceptically, but then again he might not. There's only a week to go until Halloween, and he and his costume are going to be ready. "What if I hit my sexual peak down there? What if I've passed my sexual peak?"

Finch stares at him, skull mask expressionless. "Lucky for the Gibson twins if you did." Mr Kitty scowls back.

He needs something to wear on Halloween, but he's reluctant to change theme, and he's also lazy as hell. He ends up gluing his old ears to a reddish-orange hoodie and daubs some rough stripes across it in black house paint. Well, they're meant to be stripes – with the rough top edge and the drops that ooze and harden below each mark, they look more like lacerations.

"What do denim cut-offs have to do with tigers? And where's your tail?" Pig-Pig asks when he sees the ramshackle solution.

"Where's your shut-the-fuck-up-before-I-kill-you?" Mr Kitty snarls back.

Pig-Pig doesn't bat an eye. Death threats kind of lost their sting the third time he had to dig his own grave. Torture's a different matter. "Whatever. You look more like a dog, anyway, with your face-fur. Smell like one too." That's the first Halloween that Mr Kitty forgoes a chance to see a naked Nips Jablonski to break Pig-Pig's legs with a hammer. The candy was pretty good that year. Good quality.

Despite the mountain of evidence against her, Moochie avoids charges for the raspberry smoothie kid for two reasons. One, because the police service in their town is diabolically incompetent, as demonstrated pretty much always; and two, because it just seems _incredibly unlikely_ that a child of her stature could heft such a weighty piece of machinery, let alone exert the force required to move it upwards through bone. The kid and his new wheelchair disagree, but everyone's moved on.

Finch wonders whether anything the police investigate here registers as less than incredibly unlikely anymore. That seems unlikely in itself. He doesn't wonder about it too long, though. He has candy to eat, and graves to dig. And his jaw fucking _aches._

* * *

Finch gets a dog and forgets to name it until he's drawing up a headstone. He's already etched in the cause of death (hit by a car, almost too mundane to fathom) so it's too late to forgo a funeral. So he decides to name it One, and make Two a different breed. Bigger, maybe. One that will last – although it doesn't matter, really. Pets are replaceable. Numbers are potentially infinite.

Pig-Pig remarks on the name during the funeral, on un-sacred ground for once.

"One?"

"Yeah. S'matter, it's just a dog. Won't be needing a name now anyway, will he?"

"Oh, I get that." Incredulous looks all round. "No really, I do! It's just… didn't you used to have another dog?"

Finch thinks back. To him any past before the most recent Halloween isn't so much rose-tinted as Gaussian blurred – but yeah, he could have had a dog. Back when he had parents. Cause of death: lawnmower incident. "Guess I did… So what?"

"So if this is One… what's _that _dog's name?"

Finch shrugs. "Zero, I guess." It's not like he'll be seeing it again.

* * *

At some point in their late teens, just before they stop counting the years, a forestry company buys up the woods on the outskirts of the town. The fact that they're haunted doesn't even get the chance to scupper plans to cut them down, because the violent deaths of Pig-Pig and Devil Lad in a wood-chopper scupper them first. Finch and Mr Kitty literally have to pour them into a coffin. There's no way to really tell the pieces apart, so they don't try.

Neither of them are overly pleased when they come back on opposite sides of the same body, but it seems better than not coming back at all. The upshot, Devil Lad says often, is that he never has to see Pig-Pig's stupid face again. The downside, of course, is that he's fucking attached to it. Pig-Pig's happy enough – he's taller, and has a permanent excuse to eat for two. That's complete bullshit science-wise of course, but hey, there's two kids sharing a torso and a mismatched pair of legs, so science can go take a hike.

So Devil Lad doesn't go home that year. And after a while, there's nothing to go home to.

* * *

They all hit growth spurts, of a sort. Well, they change physically, at any rate. Finch is long-limbed and moves like a marionette, and he wears clothes that hold his skinny frame in a death grip. Devil Lad comments on this one summer evening, as the sun stretches their shadows across the street like victims on the rack.

"Finch, bro, when was the last time you ate?" It's an innocuous question, but it seems to catch him off guard.

"Um… Halloween?" And then that's that, because Halloween is Finch's answer to everything. Hell, it's kind of a focus for the rest of them as well. Reality just doesn't seem to fit them right most days, and if the only place they belong isn't a place and only happens once a year, well, they have to make the most of it, don't they?

Pig-Pig, as usual, just doesn't know when to let things go. He twirls around, evoking a dissatisfied yelp from Devil Lad, and faces Finch, walking backward. His leg is almost long enough now that the other one doesn't have to crouch. Almost, but not quite.

"I think the mask just… compounds the whole effect," Mr Kitty snorts at his word choice, "no, shut up, you cretin, it does – you seem skinnier with a skeleton mask on, that's just sense."

Finch frowns (mostly with his eyes, I guess) and says slowly, "I took my mask off the last time you asked."

"Um…" the group has come to a standstill. Pig-Pig speaks hesitantly, for a change. "I'm not calling you a liar, dude, but I really don't think you did." There's an uncomfortable silence, which Finch seems in no hurry to break, staring at Pig-Pig like he's a complete moron. Does he ever blink? Mr Kitty scuffs his trainers on the kerb, an awkward distance ahead. "Uh… when did I last ask you?"

Finch rolls his eyes. "Halloween."

"No, really –"

"No, _really_. I took it off right after we buried them, just like you asked."

Pig-Pig boggles. Mr Kitty comes back to look too, and sure enough, the skull mask isn't covering Finch's face, but perched on top of his head, casting a shadow over almost everything below, save for the white teeth and jawbone catching the last of the dying sunlight.

"Well shit." Mr Kitty whistles, the claw-like nails of his right hand idly raking through the hair on the back of his left. "You sure did."

Pig-Pig asks the difficult questions, of course, mainly because he hasn't got the good sense to avoid them. "Are those your teeth then?"

Finch raises a hand and taps his finger to his lower right canine. The skin on his hands is so pale it almost seems translucent, stretched tightly across the bones below. The teeth seem like they're grinning.

"Sure as shit not anyone else's."

* * *

Dog Two is impaled on a fence post after 3 months of loyalty, and Dog Three 'accidentally' ingests a firework after only one day. Just numbers racking up.

* * *

The plethora of not-quite-natural occurrences and night-time bumping, not to mention grisly murders, kind of rub people the wrong way after a while. The town splits pretty radically into villains and vigilantes, with everyone else caught in the crossfire. All it really means is more deaths, so Finch doesn't really care.

That is, he doesn't really care until Monica is killed, in a final ironic twist, by a militarised group of Young Republicans, and they take pains to ensure that there's not enough left of her even to sprinkle on sacred ground. It's nothing he wouldn't have done himself, in their shoes, but Finch thinks good guys only get to be the good guys if they play fair. So he goes to war.

He has a smaller army, certainly, but his army doesn't suffer the disadvantages death bestows on their enemies. It takes months, it takes underhand and devastating mass killing techniques, bombs, genetically targeted biological weapons – _mutually assured destruction_ isn't as chilling a thought when your own destruction won't be permanent. Casualties ensue (on both sides – seriously, the other guys actually hang people, like that's not weird), people flee, and a heavily armed religion- and gun-crazed few hole up in the high school. Finch thinks he's never had more fun – except on Halloween, obviously.

The high school crowd might stand a chance, but their sentry wastes time praying when he takes in Finch's face for the first time. Finch is almost offended, and says as much. "Dude, it's just a skull, we all have them. I imagine you look pretty similar, underneath." He grins his impossible grin. "We could always check." He tugs the handgun from the man's shaking hands with his own skeletal ones, and examines it. Not his ideal choice of weapon, but he's pretty sure he could administer death with a potato peeler if given sufficient motivation.

Then Pig-Pig turns around, and the guy's head explodes, because apparently ridiculous causes of death are contagious. Devil Lad attempts to gesture to his brain-stained hoodie, a difficult task with arms intended for someone else. "Fuck." He places the hands on the hips, and yeah, that's always going to look weird. "You'd think I had two heads or something." Nobody laughs.

After that, it's a simple matter of letting Moochie do her thing, and seriously, it's like these people don't know who they're fighting. Even Spike gets a few kills in, running down hallways filled with screams, donning a belt made of knotted intestines, their owner being dragged behind, a grim red carpet in his wake. A tough old woman who seems to have been sleeping in army fatigues empties a full clip into the little tyke as he barrels towards her. "What are you? You little bastard – what are you?" She's screaming all the way to the floor, demanding answers up to the moment the scissors pierce her temple.

"I be Spike." It's a shame the schools are gone and the teachers are dead. Someone really ought to teach that kid to speak.

There are about ten survivors of the initial bloodbath, and they look so stupidly human lined up on the football pitch in their pyjamas. Most of them are teenage boys, because who else signs up to save the world for the sake of holding a gun? There's a twenty-something guy with glasses in a wheelchair (Finch mentally gives him kudos for living this long), and right at the end of the line is Sally Cooper of fancy-dress birthday party notoriety, because _of course she is_. The rest of the assembled crew have the decency to look even vaguely terrified at the not-exactly humans in front of them – she just looks pissed.

"It's always you, isn't it? Finch and his little gang of fuck-ups." She's glaring daggers like someone who's not about to meet their maker. "You fucked up my party, and you're going to fuck up this town."

"_Going to_ fuck up this town?" Finch makes a brave, nearly successful attempt to raise an eyebrow. "Does this look like a white picket fence to you?"

"Yes _going to. _Did you hear me fucking stutter?" Mr Kitty growls behind him, irritated that even now, someone thinks they can stand up to Finch. Finch thinks maybe she'd be less sassy with a shiv in her stomach, but he keeps it to himself. That can always be arranged. "Why you still going by your last name, anyway, short stuff?"

He's taller than her, and has been for a couple years, but the slur's not what gets to him. Pig-Pig sticks his snout in, _as fucking usual_, and says blithely, "Last name? I always thought Finch was your first name?"

Sally laughs at that, loudly. "Nope. His first name was in use by someone more popular when he started school. But I guess 'someone's are in short supply these days, huh?" She pushes her long bangs behind her ear, as though making small-talk to someone more than a little lacking in the flesh department while staring down your own mortality is an everyday occurrence. "He's dead now, anyway. You can have 'Jack' back, if you want it."

"Jack." The skull-faced boy tests the word out. It tastes like bad memories. He thinks he likes it. "Yeah. I'll be Jack."

"Jack is dead. Long live Jack." Even though she's talking about kings, she doesn't sound like she's swearing her allegiance, just resigning herself to the inevitable. A small but surprisingly deep voice pipes up in the silence that follows.

"Um… I'm not dead." All heads turn towards the excessively muscular teen at the far end of the line (except Devil Lad's, of course, but it's not for lack of trying). He looks incredibly uncomfortable with reminding his would-be killers that, hey, they haven't killed him yet. But needing to be the centre of attention is a hard habit to break, and he's been developing it since kindergarten when he informed another little boy that _he _was Jack, Jack Jacobson, so Jack Finch would just have to be called something else. "I'm Jack. Jack Jacobson." How some things remain so radically unchanged in such a radically changing town is a mystery. Jack Jacobson, the immovable object, swallows thickly. "I'm – I'm not dead."

Sally narrows her eyes at him for a second, while everyone else tries to figure out _what the fuck is going on_. "But I saw…" and suddenly it's like a light has been switched on (for her at least, everyone else is still very much in the dark here) but it's a light that heralds her doom. "Oh shit-"

And that's as far as she gets, because a meteorite, an honest to god _meteorite_, plummets onto Jack Jacobson, removing all doubt about his mortality, and that of the guys around him. Finch, Mr Kitty, and Sally are left standing on the edge of a crater. Looks like they'll have to bury whatever's left of the other two. The other one. Whatever, they'll be burying someone. Again.

"Fuck. I guess I got the times wrong." Sally rubs nonchalantly at a bit of dirt on her forehead. Finch – _Jack_ – raises the handgun to it. He still doesn't know what she's talking about, but he's decided he doesn't care. She stares at him, and she looks tired, not scared. "Take better care of your hair, okay? You won't have it forever." And, okay, those are the weirdest last words he's ever heard.

"Whatever, Sally." He clicks the safety, realises he's just clicked it _on_ because obviously he had the safety off in order to kill people, and clicks it back off. She still just looks exhausted. He's still going to kill her. "Goodbye."

She smiles sadly. "Be seeing you, Jack." He shoots her in the head. Her body crumples inelegantly into the meteorite crater beside her. Enigmatic last words, yeah, but the hair thing would have been better.

Jack doesn't check on the bodies because he has no interest in the dead unless that status shows signs of changing, but a quick glance could have shown him that the wheelchair guy isn't among them. He also doesn't think about Sally and what she said. That's intentional.

* * *

If there's a Dog Four, nobody later remembers her. Just that she's a her.

Dog Five, however, is torn apart by Dog Six, a devil dog whose owners are presumably no longer around to rein him in. Jack feels a certain kinship with that.

* * *

One day Mr Kitty announces that he's blind. The others are shocked, which given their lifestyle is quite an achievement.

"What the fuck do you mean?" Devil Lad is furious. Fury and terror are becoming his default emotions. Jack calls him a pussy for the terror, but he prefers the term 'the voice of reason'.

"I can't see, dipshit, what the fuck do you think I mean?" Kitty responds in a snarl.

"I know what blind means, fuckhead." He co-opts an arm from Pig-Pig to backhand his hirsute friend, who ducks easily. "My question is why we're only hearing about it now – I mean shit, did you just wake up this morning unable to see? Has it been gradual? An explanation would be nice!"

"I guess… gradually?" Either Pig-Pig or Devil Lad throws their hands up in disbelief. "Well, it kind of started at the top, like little fuzzy things. I could still see pretty much okay though, so I didn't mention it."

Jack regards him slowly, somewhat quizzically. "Hey, Kitty. Take off your hood, would you?"

One of the faded fabric ears falls to the ground as he complies. There's a beat as Pig-Pig does a full circle so everyone can see Mr Kitty's head for the first time in… a long time.

"You… you fucking _moron!_" By the time Devil Lad gets back around, he's hysterical. "It's your fucking _hair!" _He's so angry he manages to get both legs to jump – a little awkwardly, it must be admitted, but he does it. "You thought you were slowly _losing your vision_, and you never even took off your hood to check?"

"I – um…" There's really nothing to say to make it less embarrassing, so Mr Kitty shuts up for once.

Jack sighs. At least there's no one around to call them fuck-ups anymore, but dear god, would they ever if they could see this. "I'll go find a razor."

He shears his friend – companion? minion? – in relative quiet, save for the occasional mutter from Devil Lad about how anyone could be such a phenomenal idiot. Pig-Pig appraises the work when he's done, if only so Devil Lad doesn't have to look at it.

"You're good, bro. You might have to do the stuff on top again later, but I don't think the rest of it's going to get much longer."

The newly-shaven boy squints up at him, eyes glinting out from a thatch of orange and brown. "The… the rest of it?" He raises clawed hands up to his head and runs his fingers over the hair on his face, thicker at the brows, running down his neck and out of sight beneath his hoodie. He stops at the pointed ears, flicking them tentatively with his hand, then twitching them independently. "Oh… cool." He chuckles hesitantly. "I guess the name Mr Kitty fits me now, huh?"

"Wolves are fucking canines!" Devil Lad yells shrilly, unable to reign in his disdain any longer. Pig-Pig gets ready to run.

"Then I guess you can call me Wolfman. Right before I rip your fucking head off!" He growls, lunges, and starts chasing a frantic Pig-Pig down the street, Devil Lad shouting obscenities back at him. Jack sighs. He wonders when everything got so fucked up.

Wolfman keeps wearing the hoodie for a while after that, with holes for his real ears where the fake ones used to be, but it will prove to be a little too warm in the summers once his coat fills out. Turns out he had a collared shirt on under that hoodie the whole time. Who knew?

* * *

Dog Six dies of starvation, which raises the uncomfortable question of why the boys haven't.

There are no more dogs.

* * *

The town is mostly abandoned, and kind of, maybe, disappearing? Jack's not sure, because he can't remember whether things that aren't there are things he remembers being there and now aren't, or just things he's imagining might have been there but really are not now nor ever were – the whole argument's very recursive. It gives him a headache just thinking about it, and when he gets headaches he rubs his head, and when he rubs his head his hair falls out – and possibly also his skin? He's not sure he wants to check just yet.

But anyway, yes the town is mostly empty, but not completely. There are other people, other things around: Raven's joined forces with another witch so they can… witch more efficiently or something; there's an infant mummy Jack's pretty sure was one of Monica's earlier experiments in necromancy, and there's a band of brothers in the burbs who seem pretty boring but who he's been assured are actually vampires. It's not that it's lonely, or anything, just the three (or maybe four, geez, can that just get less confusing already) of them and occasionally Moochie and Spike and that other kid Moochie picked up, wherever they go most of the time – but Halloween's coming up, and you just… you need a community for Halloween, even if it's a small, weird one.

So Jack puts on his big-boy boots and goes collecting. Scary as they all are, nobody really objects to the idea of moving closer together, towards the middle of town. They pick up a few more stragglers on their recon too. The first one is an out-of-work party clown, an obese middle-aged man whose hermit lifestyle meant he genuinely hadn't noticed that the town was, like, completely abandoned. He's creepy as all hell, which doesn't bother Jack and Co., but does go some way towards explaining his unemployment. Before all the kids died or moved away, that is.

Near the public park (which looks like a bomb hit it – and now that he thinks about it, Jack doesn't find that particularly unlikely) there's a family of ghosts still living in their old house. They haven't changed their routine that much, just swapped arguing about dirty laundry to arguing about leaving ectoplasm lying around. They don't mind moving, which is good, because Jack's not sure he could have forced them. He didn't even know ghosts were a thing that existed. But hey, he's a thing he didn't know existed, so he's not in a position to judge.

There's one… well, let's say 'survivor' of the biological attacks, hanging around surprisingly near the centre of the blast. He's melting. As in, continuously. Melting is a thing that he does, and a thing that he is. Devil Lad apologises when he sees him – because seriously, ow – but the guy says it's quite alright, melting forever doesn't _hurt_ or anything. He doesn't have a name that he can recall, so they just call him Melting Man, because Rich-Looking Suit Guy seems like a serious oversight of his condition.

They do a fairly comprehensive circuit of town, and pick up some other stuff that's less like people, and when they get back to their centre of operations at the town hall, it's to see that some other things have found them. Some semi-sentient shadows, and leftovers from the whole zombie thing who've been laying low. Maybe (just maybe) it _is_ a little lonely being… unnatural. One of the hangers-on is another guy in a devil-mask, because Devil Lad's soul needed more crushing, apparently. So that kind of sucks. On the whole though, their newfound congregation is – it's nice. Nice in a way befitting terrifying creatures of the night, of course.

* * *

If there's going to be a not-quite-dead community, Jack thinks, they should have a community graveyard. He sets about marking out plots, making headstones for their new neighbours, and tidying up the existing ones. It's all going well until he gets back to Pig-Pig and Devil Lad. It's just not going to work: it would be silly keeping two graves for them when they only use one, and having two devil-related headstones is just going to be confusing for everybody. He goes to break the news, expecting the worst.

"Actually, we've been thinking about this," Pig-Pig responds calmly, before stuffing his mouth with Halloween candy that Jack suspects is at least 3 years old.

Devil Lad snorts derisively. "We have?"

"We have, you know we have. Chill for a second, would you? I've got this." Pig-Pig leans forward, and Jack is reminded for a moment of the cheesy salesmen who used to come to the door asking if his parents were interested in a killer new TV package. Half business, half evil. "Jack. This little… town of yours." Pig-Pig steeples his fingers like a Bond villain.

"Uh… what about it?" His town? He supposes it is.

"You're a fine leader, a figurehead – a king, if you will – but a town… a _community_ needs… stability."

Jack has no idea what he's getting at. "Stability."

"Exactly, Jack, exactly! Stability! A person for the people, as it were. A go-to guy." And Jack, yeah, the colours of the picture are starting to show, but not enough for him to put together the whole thing.

Luckily, Devil Lad pipes up to help him out. "A politician, Finch. Jack."

"Not a politician!" Pig-Pig is slightly hysterical, "No, not a politician, per se, because we don't want, like, debates and stuff, boring stuff. Just because we would always represent two viewpoints, you know. I was just thinking about our place in all this, what we could do…" He trails off lamely, and finishes quietly, "How we could help you out. I was thinking we could be, like, a Mayor."

Jack is silent. He expects Devil Lad to try and take it back, apologise, because this is _not_ the conversation he intended on having, but instead his friend cuts in with, "And at least it would stop people from not knowing which name to call us. Or calling us Devil Lad and Pig-Pig, like we're a couple or something."

"Geez, am I that offensive to you? And by the freaking way, they don't call us Devil Lad and Pig-Pig, they call us Pig-Pig and Devil Lad. So there." Pig-Pig's back to his usual immature self, it seems.

Jack stops the argument before it can begin, because he's heard it a million times and it hasn't been interesting once. "Whatever, guys, but – wouldn't you mind being called by like, a title? It makes it seem like you're a company, or something."

Pig-Pig's shoulders go backwards and up in what Jack belatedly realises is Devil Lad shrugging. "Better a company than a couple. And _before you say anything_ –" Pig-Pig's hackles lower, "I just mean, I don't mind having you around, but I'm not very likely to crush on someone I _can't even see_ after knowing him for _I don't know how long_, when I am _attached to the back of him_. That is all; that is my entire point."

"…You don't mind having me around?"

Devil Lad demurs. "You haven't fucked up too badly. Yet." Jack feels like he's intruding on a private moment or something. It's bizarre.

Pig-Pig – Devil Lad – _The Mayor_ shakes his own hand. "Well then. Pleasure doing business with you."

And that's that.

* * *

In the summer of year Number 3, or maybe 4, of their makeshift settlement (which really needs a name) a maverick ice-cream man sets out to claim new territory. Unfortunately for him, while the territory he chooses doesn't have an ice-cream vendor, it does have a king and a mayor. Both of them are offended by the idea that someone can just _drive in_ to their little town and belong, just like that. Also, they both appreciate the fun of killing, and victims just aren't what they used to be.

So they go on the hunt. Wolfman howls at the midday sun and sets off on all fours, faster than he looks like he would be, leaving claw-marks in the arid dirt of what were once front gardens. Melting Man happily half-marches, half-oozes behind, with Jack bringing up the rear. Just because the king's in the back row doesn't mean he won't beat you. The shadows are there too to lend their terror, invisible in the light.

Whether it's the pounding paws, the decomposing man doggedly pursuing him, or the skeleton marching on impossible legs, ridges of bone around empty eye sockets gleaming, something frightens the ice-cream guy enough to run him off the road. The cheery strains of 'The Bamba' continue even as the truck flips over entirely, winding down to a slow, eerie strain as it lies immobile on its side. A helpless beetle in the sun, at the mercy of sadistic children. And full of ice-cream.

Wolfman leaps up to the driver's window, rocking the truck as he crashes down, and leans slowly down into the body of the vehicle. The sound of his heavy panting mingles with the dying jingles of 'The Bamba' and the terrified whimpers of the man below, trapped by his faulty seatbelt. The man's breathing grows frantic as he looks at Wolfman's face: the twitching lupine ears; the matted inhuman fur; the over-extended nose, and the sharp yellow teeth in the wet mouth moving inexorably towards his throat. Hot breath ghosts over the victim's neck as his would-be attacker moves up to growl into his ear: "You're going to die soon, you know that?" A helpless moan indicates that he does. "It's a damn shame, though. We don't get much company around here," Wolfman nips suddenly at a soft spot below the jaw, raising tiny dots of blood and an anxious yelp, "and I do love to play with my food." The truck's feeble jingle fades to nothing.

"Wolfman!" Jack's shout makes his friend whip his head around. "Sharing is caring, Wolfie. Play nice."

Turning back to the truck, Wolfman realises the ice-cream man has wet himself. He snickers. "No need to be scared. Well, there is now – but not of me, no," he licks away the blood welling on the man's neck, "no, no. You and I… we could have been so good together. Still, doesn't do to dwell on what might have been." And so saying, he takes an earlobe between his teeth and pulls roughly.

He jumps down to join the rest, the screams of the ice-cream man echoing as he messily swallows the ear. There's blood around his muzzle. Jack just shakes his head and sighs. "Well, boys, he's all yours." Melting Man has been joined by the clown guy, who despite his repeated protests that he's not as creepy as they all think he is, wears a gleeful expression as they scale the truck and move in for the kill.

Wolfman seems surprised that Jack isn't indulging himself, but he has his reasons. "They're new to this. And there's not much opportunity for practice. Speaking of practice," he turns to his friend, glad he's tall enough to cut an imposing figure, "what the fuck was _that?"_

"What the fuck was what?" Wolfman replies, licking at stray flecks of blood around his mouth.

"_That_, up there. The Big Bad Wolf routine. I mean you've always been a creep but that was –" he fumbles for a moment, revelling in the background noises, desperate screams and the vicious tearing of flesh. "That was new."

Wolfman shrugs, and in a rare moment of insight, says "I figure a guy's gotta make something of himself, even if it's a monster." He stops licking. For a moment as he looks up at his king, he seems worried. "Did you like it?"

Jack's teeth seem to curve into a smile, but it could be a trick of the light. "I liked it. It suits you."

The clown stands up proudly, holding what appears to be a spinal column. The sun beats down on the scene, silent but for a muffled slobbering from inside the truck. And then Moochie comes racing around the corner on a bicycle, bell ringing madly, miniature goons in her wake.

"Jack! What the hell, man?" It takes a lot to anger Moochie, but apparently he's done something pretty bad.

"Um, hi, sis." It's a little awkward, and Jack suddenly realises that the new recruits might never have met his sister or her pals. He needs to keep on top of these things. "Uh, this is Moochie. And Spike. And, um…" he has no idea of the other kid's name. Moochie waves his introduction away impatiently.

"You killed the _ice-cream man! _ What's wrong with you?" Her face falls as he still doesn't get it. "We's still kids!" Kids who still can't talk right, Jack adds internally. "We want ice-cream and murder just as much as you do! I was going to disembowel him with an ice-cream scoop and cover him with syrup. He would have been a _Bloody Sundae!" _She's distraught at Jack's apparent lack of vision.

The clown laughs, lips rimmed with blood that blends into his makeup. "Bloody Sundae. That's a good one."

Jack makes a last-ditch attempt to appease her. He's pretty sure she couldn't kill him, but it's not a chance he really wants to take. "Sorry about that, Moochie. But hey, look at the bright side. Without ice-cream to rot people's teeth, there'll be all the more for you!"

She rolls her eyes. Brothers. "Teeth? That's _so_ 15 years ago." She sighs, and makes as if to leave. "Whatever. One more thing," she points up at him ferociously, and he has _no idea _what age she is, or was, only that she's scary as hell, "Moochie's done. You can call me Hex… for now. But I'm working on something for the three of us." The kids behind her seem unflustered by her appropriation, although Jack secretly thinks she's going to have a hard time convincing Spike to be called anything else. "It's gonna be _awesome_, and when I've come up with it, you'll _never call me Moochie again_." She punctuates every word with a kick to his shin, and he doesn't feel pain, just the sensation of impact.

As the trio cycle away, Jack makes a mental note to hand her over the next human stupid enough to venture into his town.

Wolfman whistles lewdly. "Damn, Jack, your sister got _badass_. How old do you reckon she is now?"

Jack fixes him with an eyeless gaze. "If you lay one furry finger on my sister, I'll let her make you into dessert." Wolfman gulps; Jack's pleased. He's still pretty badass himself.

* * *

They pass a few Halloweens that way, in their humdrum community of horror. Jack's not sure how many, exactly, but it can't be loads, right? I mean, he'd notice. He doesn't mean to lose track, but he's got the Mayor for that end of things now, and besides, he's busy. Fear-inspiring spectacles of gore take planning – 364 days of planning, to be precise. The celebrations get better every year. So good, in fact, that they can afford to start spreading the fear. At this rate they could become a serious Halloween exporter, and it's not like they'd have any competition.

And as a ruler, of course, you have to be ready for the unexpected. One year a busload of tourists breaks down in town a fortnight before the big day, and Jack only just manages to pull together a posse before they get it moving again. A king of his calibre can't just let a massacre opportunity like that slip through his fingers.

So no, he doesn't know what year it is, or where the hell his mask has got to. All he knows is that he's making something important here.

* * *

In year Number 'I Don't Know and I Don't Care' (Jack names it, can you tell?) Jack decides to take another recon mission into the outskirts of town. He has no reason to think anyone's still out there, but… he feels it in his bones. He's a lot more in touch with those, these days. The Mayor stays behind to keep four eyes on their little community, so the chosen companions for the trip are Wolfman and a new guy, Cyclops.

It takes them a while, and Jack's glad he started this early in the year, because the old town, the extended one he used to know so well, is like a foreign country. It's a wasteland filled with the skeletons of houses slowly being reclaimed by the forest. But even so, he eventually finds what he didn't know he was looking for, in an open-plan bungalow he dimly recalls T.P.-ing one time.

"Wheelchair guy. I thought you were killed by a meteorite."

The man, who is way older than Jack remembers him being, slowly wheels away from his workbench. It isn't clear what exactly he's working on, but definitely something that involves knives, various human organs, fire, and bubbling liquids. Science and evil. This guy shows potential. He moves under a ceiling light that casts his severe features into sharp relief – and they're supremely angry.

"Did you hear me say I was killed by a meteorite?" Geez, Jack hasn't heard this much sass since he shot Sally. It's no wonder they used to date – wait. Where did that thought come from? He dismisses it.

"I generally find that dead men don't talk much." He can't see the man's eyes, but he, Jack, doesn't have eyes at all, so he's more than willing to try staring him down.

"Dead men don't talk much. Hmm, yes." The doctor (Jack just going to go ahead and assume that this guy's a doctor, even if only in aspiration) pauses, considering. "And yet… here you are." He surveys Wolfman and Cyclops for the first time, and his expression is hungry. He looks up at Jack, blank anger back in place. "What do you want from me? Why are you here? Come to try and kill me again?"

"Doctor…"

"Finklestein." He looks mildly gratified to be addressed by his title, so Jack presses on.

"Doctor Finklestein. I represent – I run the town. A supernatural community, as it were…" He's not really sure how or if to continue in the face of such blatant hostility. When did he get used to people being nice to him? He should ask the Mayor to give a general memo: be crueller to Jack. "We're all about Halloween. And – look, you seem pretty evil, so let's just cut to the chase. Come and be evil with the rest of us and I won't kill you. Deal?"

The doctor glares up at him. "I don't see why this murder attempt should work when the last two failed so desperately. Still, I investigate the biology of the supernatural, and you have a town brimming with potential subjects for my experiments…" He sighs melodramatically and pats down his blood-stained lab coat. "And I suppose it would be imprudent of me to assume the third time wouldn't be the lucky one. For you, of course. None of them have been particularly lucky for me."

So, the good doctor acquiesces. And usually, Jack would leave his niggling worries about the past alone, but it seems like he has more history with Doctor Finklestein than he realises, and if he's meant to be the king it seems like something he's supposed to know about.

"Third time? I've killed you twice before?"

He earns an especially venomous look for that. "_Tried to _kill me_. _Don't you remember?"

Jack tries to look blasé, and since there's only so much emotion a skull can convey, he thinks he succeeds. "I kill a lot of people."

The doctor laughs bitterly. "Yes. Yes you do. Well then, _Jack_, let me refresh your memory." He begins a slow approach, wheels creaking. "The first time, I was 18. My girlfriend threw a costume party for her birthday. She came to me in a blind panic a few hours before and told me not to attract too much attention to myself with my costume, because she had a bad feeling. I mean, a bad feeling? What kind of advice is that? But I thought, whatever, she's hot, she's upset, I'll do what she wants. I thought you couldn't get more innocuous than just wearing white pants – ha ha, I'm a glass of milk, get it, _chill the hell out Sally_ – but then _that_ idiot's head exploded," he gestures with blind fury at Wolfman, "and you sicc'ed your _deranged maniac _of a sister on me." His pace hasn't increased, but his voice is rising steadily in pitch as he works himself up. "I never walked again, and nobody cared. But at least I got out of this crazy town. I went away to college, you see, Jack, and I stayed away. I was _going places_. At least, I was until I came back to see my folks before my last semester. And of course," he laughs again, joyless, "that was when you chose to wage your stupid war." He's right below Jack's face now, looking right up at him with detest, not the type good feels towards evil, but a visceral personal hatred. "I didn't get out in time. I thought maybe the military goons stood a chance, but they put too much stock in God being on their side. I was going to get out, I was going to get Sally back. And then _you _came in, called down a fiery rain of death from the sky, and shot her in the damn head! But guess what, _King Jack_. I've spent 41 years figuring out your stupid death-defying shit, and I _will get her back._"

Jack understands what he's hearing, of course, he's not stupid, but the implications… they just can't be right. "But you can't… You're what, 4 years older than me? So that would make you…" The numbers are there, he knows, but they just won't come.

"66. Jesus, don't you keep a calendar?" Finklestein is angrily moving items on his worktop in a way which could generously be described as 'tidying'. "You're 62. Or at least you would be. I haven't exactly figured out what effect the occult has on the aging process yet." He throws a few dangerous-looking metal implements into a tool box. "I can be my own test subject for that once I'm there."

"Once you're… you're still coming?" Of all the things Jack had taken from that rant, Finklestein's continued cooperation wasn't one.

"Of course I'm still coming. I'm a scientist, and this is an ethics-free opportunity. Besides, since you're here, you can transport my equipment." He slips past Jack coolly. As he passes out of the room, he adds to nobody in particular, "And don't forget Sally, she's in the back."

"Sally's alive?"

Jack feels Doctor Finklestein's grin rather than seeing it. If he still had flesh, it would be crawling.

"Not yet."

* * *

Finklestein, old and bitter as he is, proves to be an invaluable addition to Halloweentown – hey, it's catchy and accurate, what more do you want from a name? His investigation into the science of the supernatural is pretty well along, and for residents who are willing to get under the knife, he's happy to give them a little surgical help in becoming their ideal creepy selves.

The Clown with the Tearaway Face gets his name, which is a relief to everyone. Cyclops becomes a little more symmetrical, improving his peripheral vision immeasurably. But by far the biggest help comes to the Mayor.

"I don't see why you shouldn't be able to speak both your minds without turning your whole body," he muses. He probably doesn't mean well, but the outcome is both useful _and _creepy, so everybody wins. The Mayor hasn't been happier since he was two little boys.

Jack stays away from him as much as possible. Yes, the old man is helpful, but he's pretty sure if he were to let the doctor study him for any length of time, he would regret it. From his grave. Eternally. Also, Jack hates thinking about his past.

But in this town (don't we love it now and forever amen) the past has a nasty habit of rearing its undead head even after you've double-checked its pulse and shot it again for good measure.

It's Melting Man who comes to him and tells him an old friend of his is back. For a fleeting second he thinks it's Monica – but it's not Monica. It's never Monica.

"Fancy meeting you here," he says casually, not saying, _not _saying, _fancy meeting you here, sitting on my headstone like you belong there, _continuing instead, "quite a coincidence."

Sally Fucking Cooper glances up at him and sighs. "Wish I could say it was, Jack. But it's not coincidence. It's destiny." Her nose wrinkles at the word. She scratches at the stitches on her right wrist, lumpy and uneven.

"Those are new." Jack comments, not saying _why don't you crawl back to your crater and let things make sense again. More sense. A little bit of sense. Any sense._

"New? Yeah. Most of me is, far as I can tell. The good doctor may be a genius, but he's no artist. Still," and at this, a hint of resentment enters her voice, "I wouldn't be here without him." Silence falls between them, easy on her part, uneasy on his. Eventually, she speaks again. "Any big plans in the near future?"

"The Mayor was considering organising a raid on the next town over," he tells her automatically.

"When?"

"Two weeks."

She leans down and plucks a small flower from Jack's grave. It's a suitably ominous gesture. The fact that he hasn't actually died since they formed the town should soften it somewhat – but it doesn't. He wants to tell her something, to stop, anything, but the words die on his lips (pun very much intended – and he doesn't have lips). The flower likewise dies in her hand, wilting before his very… well, not eyes, but you get the picture.

She frowns at the crumpled petals, and turns an apologetic face up towards him. "Raid, huh? I wouldn't recommend it."

"Wouldn't recommend…" and wilful ignorance be damned, nobody's going to tell him how to run his town. "And why do you think that?"

"I don't think it, Jack, I _know _it's a bad idea." She's appealing to him, and he doesn't care.

"Then how do you _know_ that?"

Sally scoffs. "Please. You might as well ask me how I knew Jack Jacobson was going to die."

Jack comes to the decision he's been avoiding for decades. He asks the question. "So… how did you know Jack Jacobson was going to die?" Sally wrinkles her brow at him, confused. "What? You said I might as well ask you…"

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, you might as well ask me that as the other, because it's an equally stupid question. And, you know, ask a stupid question…"

"Ask a stupid question… what?"

She gives him the time-honoured 'I can't believe you're really that stupid' look. "Exactly. I already told you, dumbass." It's been a while since anyone cussed him out like that. It's refreshing, much like a spider running down your spine is refreshing. She closes her eyes resignedly, and repeats, "it's destiny."

Now it's Jack's turn to scoff. "I don't believe in destiny."

At first he thinks he's shocked her into silence, and, for a moment, he has. Then her body spasms, her arms folded tightly over her quaking stomach, and she laughs so hard she almost falls off his headstone – uncontrollable, maniacal, the laughter of the insane. Eventually it subsides into giggles. As she straightens up, blinking, a tear falls from one eye, collecting in a pocket of skin between the stitches on her cheek. Jack is surprised, which is surprising in itself. He thought that was a habit he'd kicked long ago.

Sally collects herself. "Sorry about that. But really? You don't believe in _destiny?_" She gestures to him with a patchwork arm. "You're a _skeleton, _Jack. Or hadn't you noticed?"

He re-arranges himself, smoothing down his long-tailed blazer with a hand of bone, over his ribcage and down to where it hangs unsupported over his body cavity. "I'm a skeleton who's _king _of this town_, _Sally. You're just one of Finklestein's experiments_. _What's your point?"

Her face hardens. Apparently spending 40 years… 50… 60… however many years she spent dead, it hasn't been enough to stop her looking so tired. "My _point_ is – well geez, listen to yourself. You're willing to believe that I am the resurrected consciousness of Sally Cooper in a re-animated vessel made of people-pieces, but it's too much for you to believe that I'm even a little bit _psychic?" _She shakes her head angrily, pulling the new stitches around her neck tight.

"It's just… not how life works." Jack's speaking softly, reassuringly. He's not sure who he's meant to be reassuring. He hopes it's her – but he doubts it – and places his skeletal hand over hers on the headstone. She looks up at him in surprise, but doesn't try to stop him picking up her hand and holding it. Holding hands with girls in graveyards. Jack feels 13 again. He feels like Finch. "Do you mind?"

She shrugs, and laughs again, softly. "It's not my hand."

* * *

Jack doesn't, generally speaking, go in for apologies, but he has the feeling Sally's going to be around for a while: and he can kill her, but he can't kill destiny, if it does exist.

The year they find the Creature under the Bed, Jack says, "Sorry I ruined your party," and he means 'sorry I shot you in the head'.

The year they find the Creature under the Stairs, he says, "Sorry I shot you in the head," and he means 'sorry you died knowing what you'd be coming back to'.

He never says, "Sorry you're mixed up in my destiny."

One year he decides to go scouting around Area 51 for new recruits. Sally and her flowers say it's a bad idea, but he goes anyway, and almost doesn't come back. When he does, miraculously with nothing missing (not that he believes in miracles, and that's something he doesn't intend to change _ever_) they sit together on his headstone, holding hands. Jack looks at the moon and envies the man in it, whose feet will never touch his grave.

He says, "Sorry you're psychic. I know how much you hate it." He doesn't say _I hate it too_.

For a second it seems like Sally will pull her hand away from his, but she just shifts it slightly, and squeezes. It's the closest thing to forgiveness he's felt since… it's the closest to forgiveness he's felt.

"There is one upshot to the situation." Sally says eventually.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." She smirks, and it would look scary even without the stitches. "If there's one thing that annoys a scientist more than making a psychic girlfriend, it's making a psychic girlfriend who predicts being with someone else."

And, yup, she's evil enough for Halloweentown. Wait – "Someone else?"

"Someone else," she repeats, but makes no other move. "You're right, you know, about this not being how life works? That's what I hate about it." She nudges him playfully with her shoulder. "What you hate about it too, I bet. Destiny is the ultimate fuck you to immortality."

"Oh yeah?"

"Shit yeah. If you can never die, you can do whatever you want, make anything happen. But if you already know what's going to happen…?" She gives him a moment.

The bones of his mouth feel like a tomb, his body like a prison. "If you already know what's going to happen… it doesn't matter what you do."

* * *

Jack doesn't try to leave town for a long time after that, just busies himself with bringing closer together his already tight-knit community. They get a theme song and they wear it like a uniform. They get a gate, and Jack pretends it's there to keep people out rather than in.

In the end, to leave he has to lie, not to Sally but to himself. He doesn't tell her at all, doesn't want her advice – which tells you all you need to know about the merits of the idea. But he's just checking on the old town, just checking for new recruits in the forest, and where's the harm in that?

There's no harm, because there's no town. There's just forest. He walks and walks, and he never sees so much as a brick he recognises. No pavements, no asphalt. Not even any bones. The past is now officially like a foreign country, and the closest thing he has to a passport is Sally. And maybe Moochie – Hex? Barrel? What the hell's her name these days? He knows her little troupe spend a lot of time in the woods. But fuck, he doesn't know why. A king is nothing outside his kingdom.

* * *

"If this isn't life, what is it?" More headstone hand-holding. Apparently it's a thing now.

Sally smiles. She's slowly losing her bitterness, mostly because it's hard to sustain in the face of the endless years stretching ahead and the inexhaustible enthusiasm of the other townspeople. "I've been thinking a lot about that. I think... I think it's a story."

"A story, huh? What sort of story?"

"Whatever sort we make it into, I suppose. A horror story… a love story…" she shrugs. "I just get glimpses into chapter endings now. I used to get whole scenes. But then, I guess I used to be whole myself." Finklestein's new assistant Igor has been a welcome distraction, but he still makes time to 'perfect' Sally, replacing limbs and skin and digits so she's never used to her own body.

Jack squeezes her hand. A comfortable silence passes, broken only by a distant howl. "Just to be clear – I am the 'someone else' in your love story, right?"

She laughs. "Right. And I'm the love interest in your horror story."

"Don't you mind? Not having a choice?"

"Do you?" She's got him there – and for once, being powerless in the face of destiny doesn't seem like such a bad prospect.

* * *

Things, in their own spooky way, are as settled as they can be. Jack gets a dog. He's had it before.

And so what if this isn't life, theoretically speaking?

After all, Sally tells him, "When you live the life that leads to your death, and not any other life that leads to any other death – that's power."

That's power in _life. _In a story, who's to say what matters? Who's to say what power is? Well, in his town, _he _says. Who has more power than a king?

And if Sally's premonitions seem to make her something like an author, aha, he's thought of that too: it's his choice of whether or not to follow her advice that determines the exact outcomes. The sentences before The End, as it were.

(And if he takes her advice about 95% of the time and always regrets it when he doesn't, geez, get off his back, a king can have advisors, can't he?)

So Jack gave up life a long time ago, when he gave up death. And sometimes, yeah, he wonders whether it was worth it.

But right now there's a sour wind blowing, bending the long grasses that grow on his neglected grave, making the autumn leaves briefly silhouettes against the moon. It carries a desperate howl, and ominous strains of song. It carries the promise of evil.

They don't want or need the confines of reality to fit them any more - this is the only place they belong, and it only happens once a year and, well, they've made the most of it. They have stretched a time into a town. Life was a small price to pay.

This is Jack Finch's story.

This is Halloween.


End file.
